After
rendezvous-ing with Gertie at the lookout, Elliott rides his bicycle
into the woods with his white-sheeted friend E.T. in the handlebars'
basket. With his magical telekinetic powers, E.T. soars the bicycle
over the edge of a cliff into the air, flying silhouetted against
the face of the moon. Elliott is frightened by their elevation and
cries out: "Not so high!" But then he also laughs with
exhilaration as they drive over the tree-tops, until they experience
a rough landing.

Although everyone was told to return home no later
than one hour after sunset, Elliott and E.T. remain long after dark
in the forest, worrying his mother. Upset and annoyed that her children
are still out at 9:45 pm, she blows out many of her lighted Halloween
candles.

In the forest close to the spaceship's landing site,
E.T. sets up the transmitter mechanism to begin signaling. The saw-blade
sits flat on the platter of the phonograph. The open umbrella (lined
with aluminum foil) is pointed toward outer space. A rope is tied
between a tree branch and the saw-blade/fork/coat hanger mechanism
with nails above the saw blade, that is plugged by cable into a lantern
battery to activate the Speak 'n' Spell device.

Exasperated, Mary drives off to alert authorities about
her missing children, muttering to herself: "Their father's
gonna hear about this one. Mexico!"
Unidentified men get out of their parked surveillance car as she drives
away and walk up the driveway toward the house.

E.T. places the transmitter contraption in an open
space - the landing site - in the wooded forest with help from Elliott.
As they stare towards the stars and scratch their faces, the device
begins to transmit signals into the heavens:

the wind moves the branches

the rope is pulled

the fork mechanism (attached to the rope) grabs
the individual sharp points of the saw blade and rotates it on
the phonograph platter

the rotation of the saw blade causes the hanger
and nails to scratch the flat surface of the blade and send signals
through the Speak 'n' Spell into space through the open
umbrella

Elliott is ecstatic: "It's working!" And
E.T. says: "Home."

Meanwhile, the government officials have now targeted
Elliott's home and their dark, shadowy figures have entered, searching
with flashlights in each room. Inside the house, they find the greatest
radiation readings from a Geiger counter coming from Elliott's room
(hung with a modified sign, "DO NOT ENTER").

In the forest in the cold and damp air, it has become
very late and a return signal has still not been received. E.T. sadly
looks up at the sky, saying
"ouch," signifying his pain (physical and emotional). Both
Elliott and E.T. are beginning to become ill. Elliott feels the effects
of night air. Besides depression, poor diet, and homesickness, the
effects of gravity on E.T.'s body are taking their toll. With tears
in his eyes, Elliott senses that E.T. may be leaving him soon - one
of the most touching scenes in the film:

You could be happy here. I could take care of you.
I wouldn't let anybody hurt you. We could grow up together, E.T.

E.T. only responds by saying, "Home," but
he notices that Elliott is crying, and touches one of the tears on
his cheek. By early morning, Elliott awakens from his sleep next
to the communication machine, but E.T. is gone.

The Next Day:

In the kitchen, a policeman questions Elliott's mother
about the possible reasons for her son's disappearance: "Is
there anything to indicate that he might have run away, any family
problems or recent arguments?" Mary explains that she has recently
separated from her husband "and it hasn't been easy on the children." Gertie
adds: "My father's in Mexico."
When Mary shuts the refrigerator door, Elliott is revealed standing
behind her. Sick, feverish and depressed, Elliott is safely back home,
and learns that he has been the object of a search.

When Elliott learns that E.T. has not returned to the
house, he pleads with Michael to find the lost creature near the "bald
spot" in the forest. Michael is followed by a government vehicle
through the neighborhood as he rides furiously toward the forest.
After finding the abandoned communications device, he discovers E.T.
moaning and dying in water next to a flowing stream, weakened with
a pale white color. Sounds of an unseen government helicopter are
heard overhead. Away from his natural habitat, E.T.'s health is rapidly
worsening and deteriorating.

Michael brings the extra-terrestrial home - now both
Elliott's and E.T.'s lives seem to be draining away. They both experience
the same physical symptoms and are expiring together as a result
of their symbiotic relationship. Michael fetches his mother, swearing
her to absolute secrecy before revealing the 'goblin' from the shed
to her:

Remember the goblin...just swear the most excellent
promise you can make.

Unaware of the creature until now, she views the whitish-skinned
creature lying on the bathroom floor next to Elliott. The drained-of-life
alien moans with his left arm extended toward her: "Mom." Shocked,
her cup turns over in her limp hand and spills coffee onto the floor.
Elliott clothed in white long-john underwater (looking remarkably
similar to E.T.'s whitish pale color) tells his mother:

We're sick. I think we're dying.

Although her first thought is to get her children downstairs
and out of the house to protect them, Gertie insists that E.T., "the
man from the moon"
is harmless. After Mary carries Elliott (protesting that they are leaving
E.T. alone) down the stairs and the front door is opened, she encounters
a real lunar explorer/astronaut - a man in a space suit. Other space-suited
men enter the house from different directions blocking their flight
as she screams:

This is my home.

A row of men wearing helmets and uniforms march toward
the street in the dusk's light; some of them are rolling a large,
cocoon-like plastic tunnel toward the house. E.T. is discovered on
the bathroom floor crying: "Home."

That Night:

Outside, the house is surrounded by trailers, vehicles,
floodlights, and workmen. Scientists have enveloped or enclosed the
quarantined house in an air-tight, cocoon-like plastic tent to either
protect or decontaminate it. The man with the jangling keys, scientist
Keys (Peter Coyote), wearing a blue jumpsuit with hood, enters the
house through a van attached to the transparent, plastic tunnel.
He makes his way inside the house, through a sealed entryway, to
a makeshift emergency room or laboratory where scientists are studying
the alien with sophisticated machinery. They prod, poke, and stick
EKG sensors on him.

Family members are questioned by scientists about E.T.
- his sleep patterns, surface sweating, hair loss, his building or
writing capability and his ability to manipulate his environment.
Michael explicitly describes Elliott's and E.T.'s merging:

Both Elliott and E.T. are stretched out on long tables
alongside each other within another quarantined and plastic-enclosed
room. The two are connected to life-support equipment that registers
similar graphing results. Elliott protests their treatment:

You have no right to do this. You're scaring him.
You're scaring him! Leave him alone. Leave him alone, I can take
care of him.

With two fingers (like E.T.), Keys taps on the clear
cover surrounding Elliott's oxygen tent and speaks, the only doctor
or scientist to directly talk to Elliott and identify with him, becoming
a friend [he's an adult version of 10 year old Elliott]. They are
also identified together by Elliott's reflection on Keys' transparent
face gear:

Keys: Elliott. I've been to the forest....Elliott.
That machine. What does it do?
Elliott:...Is it still working?
Keys: It's doing something. What?
Elliott: I really shouldn't tell. He came to me. He came to
ME.
Keys: Elliott. He came to me too. I've been wishing for this since
I was 10 years old. I don't want him to die. What can we do that
we're not already doing?
Elliott: He needs to go home. He's calling his people and I don't
know where they are. He needs to go home.
Keys: Elliott, I don't think that he was left here intentionally.
But his being here is a miracle, Elliott. It's a miracle. And you
did the best that anybody could do. I'm glad he met you first.

A doctor announces that E.T. has DNA. As E.T. begins
to approach death, his blood pressure sinks, while Elliott's condition
stabilizes. Elliott holds his hand out to E.T., tearfully asking
him to stay connected:

E.T.'s life fades away. Elliott loses his telepathic
connection to E.T. and miraculously comes back to full life: "The
boy's coming back. We're losing E.T." The boy stretches his
arms out to his dead friend, pleading for him to answer:

E.T. Answer me, please. Please.

In another part of the house, Michael goes into the
closet (E.T.'s home) and huddles down among all E.T.'s possessions
until he falls asleep, saddened by the apparent loss of the creature.

The Next Day:

By the next morning, the geranium plant has withered
in E.T.'s closet home, signifying his death. A distraught Elliott
screams to E.T. as doctors and scientists rush en masse to
E.T.'s bedside and tear open the plastic coverings around him. Realizing
that E.T. has no blood pressure, pulse or respiration, they make
frantic efforts to revive the alien, administer CPR and other life
supports - as Elliott reaches out:

Elliott is wheeled out from his spot next to E.T. Gertie
holds her doll - and jumps when electric shock is applied to E.T.'s
body. Elliott embraces his mother as E.T. expires around 3:36 in
the afternoon. None of the government's medical technology can save
the expiring alien. Outside, Mike's friends realize that "something's
happened" in the house when a group of officials depart in their
car.

Clad in a blanket, Elliott stands inside the isolation
room. Keys understands Elliott's need to have a few moments with
his dead friend, now placed in a metal casing (coffin) packed with
dry ice:

Keys: They're gonna have to take him away now.
Elliott (fearing what was to be executed in the frog dissection scene):
They're just gonna cut him all up.
Keys: Would you like to spend some time alone with him?

Elliott doesn't answer. Tearful and sorrowful, Elliott
keeps a vigil next to E.T. and speaks lovingly to his dead, extra-terrestrial
friend (covered in a zipped-up plastic bag within the lead casing):

Look at what they've done to you. I'm so sorry. You
must be dead, 'cause I don't know how to feel. I can't feel anything
anymore. You've gone someplace else now. I'll believe in you all
my life, every day. E.T. I love you.

While viewing his friend for the last time, Elliott's
heart-felt love revives his friend. E.T.'s red heartlight glows through
the glass window when the lead, tomb-like container enclosing E.T.
is shut. So bereaved, Elliott doesn't realize his companion has been
reborn until he notices the dead geranium plant has come back to
life and is blossoming. He quickly rushes back to the casing, opens
E.T.'s enclosure, unzips the plastic bag which encases his friend,
and finds E.T. (with wide open eyes) miraculously resurrected and
repetitively bursting out: "E.T. Phone home." [The religious
symbolism is fairly striking in E.T.'s death and resurrection.] "Phone
home, phone home."

Suddenly realizing that E.T. is going to be retrieved
by his space ship ("Does this mean they are coming?") when
the alien tells him so, Elliott knows that he must help his friend
to escape from the cold and hostile government workers and scientists
so that he can return home. So Elliott tells E.T. to "shut up" and
be "quiet" to avoid detection, and he covers the red-glowing
heart-light with a blanket.

Pretending with feigned sorrow that E.T. is still dead
in the lead coffin when Keys appears, Elliott lets his overjoyed
brother in on the secret and they follow E.T.'s container through
the plastic tunnel to a waiting van. They leave a written message
for Mary, delivered by Gertie, informing her of E.T.'s resurrection
and their rendezvous plan. In the driver's seat of the van holding
E.T., Michael tells his friends to meet them on their bikes at the
top of the playground hill. Then, he sheepishly admits as he drives
off in the scientists' van:

I've never driven forward before.

He zooms off, ripping out and dragging behind him about
twenty feet of the plastic tunnel with workers still inside.

As they drive through the neighborhood, Elliott unfastens
the plastic tunnel, dropping the two workers into the middle of the
road. Mary backs the family car out of the driveway just when Keys
approaches. Gertie blurts out that they're going "to the spaceship
- to the moon." At the playground, Elliott releases E.T. from
his metal tomb inside the van, still smoking from the dry-ice lining.
Standing in the van with a white blanket draped over him, E.T.'s
red heartlight glows brilliantly. Elliott identifies E.T. and tells
Mike's friends what they're doing:

Elliott: He's a man from outer space and we're taking
him to his spaceship.
Greg: Well, can't he just beam up?
Elliott: This is reality, Greg.

Covered with a white blanket, E.T. is placed into Elliott's
bicycle basket and they all race off on their bicycles. The plainclothes
policemen and US government officials in pursuit of the van carry
guns - as Mary worriedly warns: "No guns, they're children." [The
guns were digitally removed from the 20th anniversary print of the
film, as was this line of dialogue.]

The final climax is the dramatic, frantic chase as
the kids on their bikes flee the cops and other officials and attempt
to get E.T. to a pre-arranged rendezvous with his spaceship so he
can return home. U.S. government vehicles and police cars give the
cyclists a chase, trapping them with a roadblock guarded by armed
men with shotguns. E.T. makes the phalanx of bikes magical, outwitting
the pursuers' blockade by flying the bicycles off the ground against
the bright reddish sky of the setting sun, Peter Pan-style.

When they reach the bare spot landing site in the forest
where the transmitter was left, the alien space ship descends into
view. E.T. exclaims "Home" as the spaceship lands - his
heartlight flashing red at the lights of the great ship. They are
joined in the forest by Gertie and the two most important adult role
models in the film, Elliott's mother and Keys.

At the rendezvous site, the hatch of the ship opens,
and in a touching, goodbye ending, E.T. leaves his earthbound friends.
The scene is portrayed with awe, wonder, and amazement:

Standing in the spaceship's hatch is another creature
- is that E.T.'s mother? Michael's friends, Mary, Keys (Elliott's
new 'father' ?), Michael and Gertie watch as Elliott bids his friend
goodbye. E.T. has brought all of them together to look on:

E.T. (to Elliott): Come.
Elliott: Stay.
E.T. (after touching his heart where there is a ruby-glowing light
and then touching his lips, expressing his pain over leaving and
separating): Ouch.
Elliott (after repeating the gesture): Ouch. (Then they embrace in
the blue light of the spaceship.)
E.T. (after touching his long finger lightly to Elliott's forehead,
his fingertip glows and he indicates): I'll be right here.Elliott: Bye.

E.T. will remain in or share in Elliott's thoughts,
or perhaps they will communicate telepathically in some way. And
then E.T. waddles up the spaceship's gangplank ramp with the potted
geranium plant in his hands (a plant sample - the original object
of his journey). He enters his "home" to depart from planet
Earth, leaving a rainbow streak vapor trail in the sky as a symbol
of his promise to Elliott that he will be "right here" in
his thoughts and dreams. The alien creature has been the catalyst
to add the very ingredient missing in the family's household: a strong
center capable of holding everyone together.

The final shot is a low-angle zoom closeup of Elliott's
suddenly much older, less lonely and wiser face - healed by the 'touch'
of the alien - as he looks up into the sky. Through his contact with
a benevolent alien, Elliott will grow up into adulthood with greater
compassion, wisdom, and capacity for emotion in his life.